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There are still some sites in America which operate this way? Really? What a joke!
Where’d you go, Appalachian State? My dad’s family is from that area, relatively familiar with Cumberland, LaVale and all those places.
GDPR is a real heavyweight. VPN takes care of it.
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Well, today is my “entitled little shit on the internet” day of the week, so if an entire news organization cannot be bothered to conform to something 95(?)% of other non-EU news pages do to reach non-domestic viewers worldwide I cannot be bothered to jump lazily through some hoops to get them to sell me ads on their news-reports 
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I went to Frostburg. Had a great time, great classes and professors, beautiful scenery. Became friends with several local students and got to know the area–Deep Creek Lake, Swallow Falls, and out to Morgantown WV as well. LaValle felt like a sort of return to civilization at the time, as there were almost no stores in Frostburg then. I really loved the isolation, honestly, and even considered moving to Cumberland after my grad degree, as I stayed friends with people there.
But you know, I’d venture into the wilds of Garret County to go hiking with friends, and it was a different, sort of scary world driving around there at times. There was an oddly similar vibe when I lived in the Santa Cruz mountains on the opposite coast for a while–people very aggressively want to keep other people away.
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Well, it’s not like a coronavirus epidemic was top of the UK’s National Risk Register for about a decade.
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My dad went to Frostburg as well, ages ago. Forestry, although that didn’t end up being that relevant since, after bouncing between a few jobs, he spent almost 30 years working at a pie company.
It’s always crazy to me how cheap things are up there. He sold the family house a few years ago after being tired of renting it out. Two stories, a basement, four bedrooms and three bathrooms with a couple acres of land, and it went for like $65k or something. The kind of area where you can get a haircut for $8. But probably not a bad call on not living there. He left specifically because he didn’t want to work at the paper mill or the prison, and there wasn’t many other opportunities.
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Working at a pie company kind of sounds like a dream job to me : )
Things were noticeably cheaper there, definitely. I grew up in Baltimore, and Frostburg was the farthest-away university that was still in the (small) state (I had some state scholarships and/yet wanted to put distance between me and the parents). Cost of living was a welcome change. And Marriott ran the food service there, so the campus meal plan was a steal.
After grad school, I split the difference between Baltimore and Frostburg and lived in Frederick for a while, which I really liked. I’ve been missing MD a lot lately, as covid has kept me from flying back to see my mom for a couple years now : /
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It was actually horrible, at least on the floor (admittedly, he worked in scheduling for most of the time). I worked at Edwards a couple of summers and it was hands down the worst job I ever had. Production floor was 105 degrees and humid thanks to the high pressure waterjets used to slice the pies. Which also made the floor so slick you had to wear special shoes to avoid falling (and occasionally you did anyhow). And during my shift all I would do was crack frozen pies out of their pan and put them on the bracket of the conveyor to be sliced, then put the empty pie pan on a pallet to go back and be reused. That whole chain of actions had to take two seconds. 30 pies a minute, every minute minus breaks, for 8-10 hours. Then you might draw the short straw and end up on cleanup, washing gobbets of wet dough and pie leavings out of the slicer’s innards before the next shift started up. Add to that a group of co-workers who often spoke different languages than English and literally had to be told on multiple occasions that deodorant is highly recommended (it was near a UN resettlement thing, so there were at least a couple dozen nationalities on the floor and not all of them were up on normal American expectations) and it was really just horrid. Even the PetSmart distribution center was better.
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My wife blew her stack the other day when she saw a Facebook post (shocking, I know) claiming that the current nursing shortage is due to people leaving/getting fired because they refuse to get vaccinated. That dumb statement ignores:
- that there’s been a nursing shortage for years
- that there are way more nurses burning out from having to deal with people who wouldn’t need treatment if they’d just get the %&!*%! vaccine
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Sadly, my sister is one of the anti-vax ER nurses. Somehow she got an exception from our hospital, which had a mandate start on October 1st.
I don’t understand how anybody can be a healthcare professional and be anti-vax. I know it’s a thing, it just doesn’t compute. It seems like a huge career mismatch.
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Going to be a little mean here. Nurses are not as educated as doctors. Makes them more prone to this sort of junk.
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Didn’t realize we had the same sister! Tell her what’s up, haven’t talked to her in years.
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Ha, unfortunately I don’t have that luxury. We have daughters that were born within two months of each other that have always gotten along well. Emma has already been excited about finally having Peyton over for a sleepover once the kid vaccines roll out. They haven’t seen each other beyond video chats since all this started; Emma broached the subject of a masked outside playdate a few months back, but Peyton said masks were stupid to the general merriment of her parents on the other end of the line. So it goes.
I hear you. Nothing like families to put the fun in dysfunctional. We were “lucky” in that we cut ties before she had kids, as they’re basically mini versions of her - anti-vax, pro-Trump, racist, misogynistic, white supremacists. Especially ironic considering most white supremacy groups would be… unfriendly… towards us being Jewish. 
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^Again, something I will never understand. People from the very groups Trump so obviously despises supporting him. Clearly, my imagination needs work.
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Got my Moderna booster - third shot - Monday afternoon.
In related news, I feel awful. Similar results to the second shot; fever, malaise, and my arm is pretty damn sore.
Kids are scheduled for their first ones Saturday…not sure what’s worse, how I feel right now or how I’m gonna feel listening to them on Sunday.
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